Christina Cuomo is leading the Fungal Genomics Group at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. She uses genomics and transcriptomics to tackle questions about the evolution of fungal pathogens from clinical and environmental settings. Her group focuses on understanding the epidemiology as well as genetic determinants of drug resistance and virulence in major human pathogens such as Candida auris, Candida glabrata or Cryptococcus neoformans and dimorphic fungi. Her talk will be about population genomics and the evolution of virulence traits in Cryptococcus neoformans.

Bin He is an assistant professor at the University of Iowa, where he studies the evolution of gene regulation for stress response, combining functional genomics, phenotyping, and molecular genetics approaches. In his group, Bin uses baker’s yeast and Candida glabrata as models to understand how regulatory networks evolve and how such changes contribute to adaptation to new environments. At the meeting he will be talking about parallel expansion and divergence of the Hyr/Iff-like (Hil) adhesin family in opportunistic yeast pathogens.

Charissa De Bekker is an assistant professor at the University of Central Florida, where she is doing research on behavior manipulating parasitic fungi. Her lab uses a lab-based zombie ant system to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying mind controlling behavioral phenotypes. Her model system for studying host-pathogen interactions is a fungus Ophiocordyceps camponoti-floridani, a parasite infecting Florida Carpenter Ant. At the meeting Charissa will be talking about connecting fungal genomes with animal host phenomes using zombie ants as a model.

Richard Hamelin is a forest pathologist and a professor at the University of British Columbia working mainly on fungal, oomycete and insect pathogens of trees. Richard uses genetics and genomics approaches to study epidemiology and evolutionary history of species responsible for several tree diseases including sudden oak death, rusts or dutch elm disease. His lab focuses on developing molecular tools to effectively diagnose and monitor forest diseases.

Lori Huberman is an assistant professor at Cornell University specializing in plant pathology and plant-microbe biology. Lori is interested in how filamentous fungi are sensing nutrients in the environment. From the molecular point of view, her lab studies transcriptional networks responsible for regulating metabolic pathways of saprophytic and plant pathogenic fungi. Lori’s group is also working on developing massively parallel screens to map phenotypes of hypothetical genes in filamentous fungi. At the meeting Lori will be talking about investigating fungicide mode of action using massively parallel screens.